TSA Caves to Pressure on Knives Policy: Is This Good News for Fliers?

The TSA ban on bringing small knives aboard flights in the U.S.—along with souvenir toy bats, golf clubs and other potentially deadly paraphernalia—will remain in effect. So is this the victory for the flying public that various parties were busy declaring this morning? Not necessarily.

It’s official: the ban on bringing small knives aboard aircraft in the U.S.—along with souvenir toy bats, golf clubs and other potentially deadly paraphernalia—will remain in effect. Late yesterday, the TSA basically threw in the towel after several months of fruitless efforts to tamp down the furor over the new rule, which had already been postponed once from its original effective date, April 25, under intense pressure from flight attendants, pilots unions, and members of Congress.

So is this the "victory" for the flying public that various parties were busy declaring this morning? Not necessarily.

I was there in early March when TSA Administrator John Pistole announced the change in policy to an industry group in New York—and on the surface, his arguments seemed eminently sensible: 1) screeners confiscate some 2,000 small knives on a daily basis, which pose little threat and consume time that screeners could better spend elsewhere; 2) small knives are already allowed on flights in much of the rest of the world.

That pitch seemed to go over well with the crowd of aviation professionals, many from overseas, who were gathered at the International Air Transport Association’s aviation security conference. But that wasn’t really the audience that had to be sold on the shift, and the implications of that oversight were soon apparent. Flight attendant groups immediately pounced, claiming they hadn’t been consulted. The union that now represents screeners quickly jumped onboard. They raised the specter of passengers attacking flight crewmembers, each other, all sorts of airborne mayhem—as if suddenly being allowed to bring on a small knife would turn normally docile fliers into homicidal maniacs.

That’s not to say flight attendants don’t have very difficult and stressful jobs, or that passengers don't sometimes lose it and endanger those around them. But most air ragers are either under the influence or emotionally disturbed (witness the recent attempt by a passenger to open an exit door in flight), and both before and after 9/11, weapons like knives were rarely if ever involved. Someone coldly plotting an attack on a crewmember could do so with or without a knife, using any number of already allowable items (a broken shard of a mirror, or small scissors—among the items that were permitted back on planes in 2005 without a lot of controversy.) Cockpit doors have been fortified, and, more significantly, the mindset of passengers and crews has been forever altered by 9/11—so that instead of cooperating with hijackers as in pre-911 days, passengers and crew are now cooperating with each other to thwart attacks, as with the would-be underwear bomber on Christmas Day in 2009.

The fact is the TSA did bungle in the way it rolled out the change. It especially should have consulted flight crews, who are keenly aware they were the first victims in the September 11 hijackings. But TSA’s surrender to the backlash doesn’t augur good things for any new moves the agency might ponder to make security more efficient.